Have a sneer percolating in your system but not enough time/energy to make a whole post about it? Go forth and be mid - welcome to the Stubsack, your first port of call for learning fresh Awful you’ll near-instantly regret.
Any awful.systems sub may be subsneered in this subthread, techtakes or no.
If your sneer seems higher quality than you thought, feel free to cut’n’paste it into its own post — there’s no quota for posting and the bar really isn’t that high.
The post Xitter web has spawned so many “esoteric” right wing freaks, but there’s no appropriate sneer-space for them. I’m talking redscare-ish, reality challenged “culture critics” who write about everything but understand nothing. I’m talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. They’re inescapable at this point, yet I don’t see them mocked (as much as they should be)
Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldn’t be surgeons because they didn’t believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I can’t escape them, I would love to sneer at them.
(Credit and/or blame to David Gerard for starting this. Apologies for not getting the previous one up - my old laptop died)
No direct links but various people on bsky have discovered LW and EA and are having a collective 'wtf is wrong with these people' and 'wait all the top AI guys are like this?' moments. And it is funny to see.
Sadly the 'you can't explain this stuff without either looking like an insane conspiracy theorist, or you need to write an actual book because people don't believe you remains a bit true.
E: ok one link: https://bsky.app/profile/niedermeyer.online/post/3mvpuq2deo22u (Guess this is a reference to the SE Gyges thread).
The ‘sex cult’ framing really seems to be catching on. Of course, none of the eugenics comes up.
Keep spreading the good sneer, everyone! There are still horrors to detail!
Wish how the american AI industry is thoroughly permeated by Yud's views on AI, and how Yud knows fuck all about how AI or computers work beyond as a sci-fi plot device, would also catch on.
ok last one but one big long bluesky thread about all this ripped from old SneerClub
the thread has hit the orange site, lots of spluttering indignation
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49766911
points to previous submission
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49737985
Fyi, I blocked him a while back. Didnt like his whole 'im the reasonable centrist' bit while making blocklists of anti ai people.
Turns out the centrist subscribes to transhumanism (hipster edition)
the overtone window can't be that fucked, can it?
Ah, so he is part of the broader eugenics community, what a surprise.
gyges is a LW regular who believes in the AI doomsday and speaks fluent rationalist but totally is not one, how dare you
"the overtone window" would be a good name for the amount of racist dogwhistling that's acceptable in the mainstream media
Ah, "Kurzweilian h+," there's his marketing tagline. Too bad importing Kurzweil also brings in all his bullshit extrapolation about exponential curves that all the other weird shit is based on. You're never going to shout down the hyperbolic lunatics by adopting the core thesis of their hyperbole.
H+ also brings in the Mores, who are behind humanity+.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natasha_Vita-More and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_More
Ooh cryonics, classy.
Yeah, as I have mentioned a few times before here I used to read their online H+ magazine a bit, and it was odd, a mix of science and woo, and they published a lot of articles. Until the moment there was one article about how transhumanism must make sure that it also helps the poor, that article was quickly removed (so quickly it wasn't archived, it was however still in my rss feed which is how I read it). After that article the amount of articles published dropped to nothing. (I always assumed the editor was fired over that or something, I think he himself also added to that article).
Ben Goertzel also regularly wrote for H+ mag. A name that shouldn't be totally unfamiliar to people who know things about transhumanism, and Ben is into PSI now. (Or considering the tone of some of the articles, he prob always was).
(Yes, I keep writing this same comment here over and over as I seem to be one of the few people who read the magazine at the time who also posts here)
E: looks like H+mag deleted their whole website. (guess being immortal is only for the rich, and not information). But look at this old LW post I found re Goertzel and PSI.
And via the comments: The solution of the whole 'is PSI real' problem? Why did you ask (Robin Hanson) it is betting of course.
Goertzel also fell for Christopher Langan's CTMU.
Yeah, at best, "Kurzweilian h+" will be pseudoscientific guff. I suppose that keeping the lower strata of intellectually bad elements while discarding the worst of the social ones is progress, but, I mean, it's kind of like saying you're into your fad diet and LLM-generated supplement regimen and then looking over at RFK and saying "but that's totally different!".
I've lost it now, but somewhere in the replies to one of those threads was a person complaining that SneerClub was too much like beating up on nerds in high school. To which I say, first, here's my blueberry bread recipe, and a nice photo of a winter sunrise, and my Star Trek fanfiction. We all friendly now? Good. Then let me suggest, cordially, that if you are continuing to think of social dynamics in terms of high-school hierarchies and shitty '80s movies well into adulthood, that is a you problem. If I can stop living as the gender I had in high school, you can stop letting your membership in a granfalloon lead you by the nose.
in the same vein as jorjor wel, rakers wile
"e/acc is a troll ideology for upsetting EA people and scamming pmarca"
and "Kurzweilian h+" is just '90s nostalgia for people too proud to shop at Hot Topic
https://circumstances.run/@davidgerard/117283017450008927
Just another centrist taking the long way around to fascism
Never forget Yud himself has said he would kill all humans if that was the only way to make nice superintelligence
Not concerning at all.
That would be like if Pyrrhus of Epirus cut off Peter’s nose to spite Paul
And more of him going on about the “worthy successor” from Emile